


honey

by ohsansa



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, it's me again the creator of the kizzie tag here to hurt your heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22253239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohsansa/pseuds/ohsansa
Summary: The year before her twenty-second birthday, Lizzie ran away. Kaleb finds her in New Orleans, and then perhaps finds something more.
Relationships: Kaleb Hawkins/Lizzie Saltzman
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	honey

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a fun party fic and instead got very fluffy. It's what they deserve. This isn't intended to be a chapter fic but I may add to it.

“I’m Lizzie,” she had said, all bright smiles and bright eyes.

“Kaleb,” he had replied, hand extended. She took it, nails painted red, with a dainty and soft grasp. Her hands were so soft, Kaleb was sure she’d never done a day of hard work in her life. 

It was hard to see Lizzie now and remember her those years ago when she and Josie had welcomed him into the Salvatore School and showed him around. Then, he was certain she was a stuck-up brat that was dubbed the Bipolar Witch of the school. He looked at her and could see the little blonde girl with the biggest smile, and felt a surge of protectiveness. 

No one in Mystic Falls would say that Lizzie Saltzman and Kaleb Hawkins were close. They weren’t. But she’d been the first face he’d seen when coming to a brand new place, she had been helpful since day one, eager to show him anything and everything he’d need to know at the school. Despite everything, despite their differences and sometimes even hostility toward each other, Lizzie was his family. MG, Hope, Josie, Raf and Landon, and even Lizzie. She was important to him. They were family.

When she ran off a year before her twenty-second birthday, no one except for Hope and Josie knew where she had gone, and they refused to tell. They were sisters, impenetrable and unwavering in their support of one another. But when Lizzie stopped answering texts and calls, when they could no longer reach her, worry began to set in. Josie and Hope did locator spells that could not land. Wherever Lizzie was, she was blocking every magical beacon that searched for her. 

Kaleb found himself in New Orleans only a few months later over summer break. He hadn’t expected to run into Lizzie, he had not been looking for her, but once his eyes laid on her he couldn’t leave her. There was some sense of fraternity there - he couldn’t abandon her when he knew she needed help. He watched as she flitted from person to person in the crowd, bodies moving to the sound of a rock band Kaleb didn’t know the name of. 

He jumped down from the balcony above, joining the crowd and easily blending into the other faces and bodies. Lizzie was dancing, her hands in the air, a wide smile on her face. Kaleb almost turned and left. She didn’t need him here, she didn’t need to be looked after like a toddler, but it was that  _ smile _ . So uncaring, so free. Kaleb didn’t think he’d ever seen Lizzie look so free and relaxed in her entire life. And her smile, the one that she had flashed him so many years ago, the one that had welcomed him into his new home.

His hands found her hips and he felt her turn underneath them. His gaze flickered up to meet hers, wide and shocked and offended and surprised and so many more emotions rolled into one. Her arms fell over his shoulders as they danced in the crowd, bumping into other bodies and couples. “What are you doing here?” she asked him. She didn’t need to shout over the music. She was calm, collected, but Kaleb knew she was preparing to disappear the moment she sensed danger.

He didn’t answer, but they continued dancing. They danced until the band stopped playing and the group dispersed and the party ended, and only then did Lizzie lead Kaleb to a nearby table at a nearby cafe. It was dark and quiet, but the cafe was bustling and bright and noisy. They sat together, Lizzie crossing one leg over the other. She looked good, Kaleb noticed. She looked happy.

“I wasn’t looking for you. I’m not here to bring you back. I just saw you, and…” he trailed off, gesturing vaguely in her direction.

Lizzie wasn’t looking at him, though. Her gaze had shifted, she was looking at anything that wasn’t him. Kaleb knew. She was calculating her best exit strategy, her best plan of escape. Her gaze eventually shifted back to him, and they were interrupted by a waitress with a pad. Before he could open his mouth, Lizzie had already rattled off an order or two lattes. Only when she left did Lizzie finally speak. “I have one year left to live. I can’t live it cramped up in a school learning magic that I won’t be able to use,” she said, shaking her head.

They didn’t speak much about The Merge or the school for the rest of the night. Lizzie told him about Hope’s family and where she was from, and that she had come here to New Orleans where her mom had fallen in love with Hope’s dad. She had studied with the New Orleans witches, learning things about ancestral magic that she never knew existed. Lizzie didn’t have hundreds of ancestors to call on, but they welcomed her in despite that.

Kaleb learned more about Lizzie in that one night than he had learned about her in the several years that he’d known her. He’d learned her dreams and hopes for the future that wasn’t going to happen, and he’d learned of her plans to kill herself one week before her next birthday. It was either herself or Josie, she had said, and she couldn’t let Josie live the rest of her life with Lizzie’s death on her hands.

“Let me stay with you, your last year,” he said the next morning when they were lying on the floor of Lizzie’s cramped apartment.

She turned her head to look at him, her gaze suspicious and questioning.

He innocently raised his hands. “I can’t convince you to not do what you’re going to do. I know that. But you can’t spend the next year completely alone, Lizzie. You can’t die alone,” he said. He knew he would not have been her first pick. He knew that Lizzie would choose ten people over him if she got her choice.

But she smiled, one of her hands reaching for his. It was still soft, still delicate, but now Kaleb knew it held much more than he could have ever imagined. “Thank you,” she whispered. 

And that same surge of protectiveness came again, washing over him. He brushed a blonde lock away from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear, and she smiled. That same  _ smile. _ He’d never be able to get over it, Kaleb realized. He couldn’t stop her from what she was going to do next year, and the realization sent a shard of glass through his heart.

When had he come to care about Lizzie Saltzman so much, he wondered. But she was here, laying on the floor with him, the sunlight spilling over her golden hair and smelling of roses and lavender and peppermint. He couldn’t leave her, he decided. She had become too important to him.


End file.
